Skeletons in the Walls

  Forget having "skeletons in the closet", I have them in the walls!  As the renovations on the Little Bayou House continue, Mark and I spent the past few days ripping down siding.  With that, we have found that nothing surprises us.  As the walls to the laundry room came tumbling down, a few skeletons came tumbling out.  Geez!  I am beginning to think that I should write some horror story here.  Skeletons hiding in the walls?  Alrighty, then!

  Yep, living on the Bayou affords us the opportunity to interact with any number of critters.  Some are friendly, others...not so much.  We find snakes, frogs, squirrels, flying squirrels and alligators in the most unusual places but I never expected to find things inside the walls.  At first glance, I recognized the tiny skeletons as geckos.  The perfectly preserved rack of bones was just over an inch in length so I knew these were just hatchlings.  Nearby was a cluster of empty egg shells. Obviously, the tiny lizards hatched and died almost immediately.  While that seems sad in some ways, it makes me wonder why they died?  I am wondering if the termite spray also kills geckos.

  There are a ton of lizards of all sorts on the Bayou and, needless to say, near and even in the house.  They do not bother me much.  I figure that I would rather have a fat lizard on my wall than a thousand termites eating that same wall.  The lizards are pest control in a natural way.  Now I am a bit worried.  As we are changing out the siding, we are, of course, spraying for future termites.  Are we killing our geckos at the same time? 

  Ask anyone on the Gulf Coast and you will hear disgusting tales of the swarms of termites that come each spring.  Great clouds of the critters envelop the houses, street lights are completely shrouded and driving becomes nigh on impossible.  There is a ready cry of "Lights out! Termites!" that can be heard being passed from neighbor to neighbor. We need all the help we can get so killing the lizards is not an option! We may have to do a rethinking of this project just so we do not find anymore skeletons in our walls!